This project started with my frustration at my inability to draw the human hand. After some investigation I discovered that my difficulty lay in the fact that there much emotion and subtlety described by the human hand. Even the slightest error in drawing hands will cause them to look glaringly wrong. At the same time I was learning computer modeling. When using computers it is very important to use as little information as possible in describing a shape. The combination of these two concepts led me to the idea of trying to use computer modeling techniques to render the human hand.
Originally, I had planned to create a series of steel sculptures of hands inspired by the computer modeling technique. I then came upon an article in the June issue of Sculpture Magazine by Robert Michael Smith about using VRML for sculpture. VRML allows users of the internet to download a copy of a model and look at it in real-time, on their own computer. This seemed to me to be the first time that sculptors could "publish" their works, like any two-dimensional artist. It occurred to me that the forms I was working on were already suited to this since they had been designed for a simple computer to easily handle.
After some experimentation I found thet VRML is a great new medium for sculpture. It offers some new ideas to the world of three-dimensional art. In VRML you can save certain viewpoints that you think the viewer should see, you can turn objects inside out (see inward), and there is no constraint of gravity or idea of "up".
The works on this site are not all of my project, they are what I have come to call the "computer" half of my thesis. The other half, the "physical" half, is a series of steel sculptures that are very similar to what I had origianlly envisioned. The VRML models are not models of the physical sculptures, they are sculptures in and of themselves. They are not virtual anything.
I hope you enjoy my work and I look forward to and rely on any comments or advice.
Thank You
Mike Mittelman
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT
September, 1996
